Time for Festival Tickets

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

Attention all New York cineastes: Depending on what hour it says on your watch, it’s officially that time again — time to finally sit down and pore over this year’s New York Film Festival lineup, to dig beneath such surface pleasures as the new Wes Anderson, Coen Brothers, or Gus Van Sant titles, and to decide right now which of the festival’s special presentations are worth checking out. For today — weeks before many ardent film fans will plan out their preferred schedule, only to discover that this title and that special event are already sold out — is the day that many tickets go on sale for the festival’s most creative and essential programs.

That said, a fair number of early birds have already snatched up some tickets to screenings and events. A large cache of NYFF tickets was officially made available to the public early Sunday morning, and will continue to be available at the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Web site today. But for those who are hoping to get the most out of the NYFF, or hope to strike a balance between the festival’s grandest and glitziest events and its more daring and invigorating sidebars, today is the day to take note.

Starting at 10 a.m. Monday, festival organizers have said that tickets for the opening night “Darjeeling Limited” screening will go on sale, along with tickets to the closing night film — Vincent Paronnaud and Marjane Satrapi’s animated memoir “Persepolis” — and the festival’s special presentation of the restored John Ford classic “The Iron Horse.” Later in the day, at 12:30 p.m., tickets will be released to the public for the festival’s many notable sidebars and showcases, including the retrospective series of Brazilian director Joaquim Pedro de Andrade, the annual series “Views From the Avant-Garde,” as well as the program that looks to pay tribute to China’s Cathay Studios. (For ordering information, call 212-496-3809 or visit www.filmlinc.com/nyff.)

While most talk of the festival thus far has focused on such films as Noah Baumbach’s “Margot at the Wedding,” the hotly anticipated (and already critically-acclaimed) Coen Brothers thriller “No Country for Old Men,” and Cristian Mungiu’s Cannes prize winner “4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days,” today’s tickets offer a glimpse of a second wave of programming that may make fewer headlines, but will surely be considered by many in the art house world to be the true gems of the fest’s lineup.

Prefer cinematic experiments? Then turn your attention to the bustling avantgarde program. Searching for a rare experience? Then try the silent “The Iron Horse,” with its live accompaniment, or perhaps the rare 1920 version of “Hamlet,” which altered the story just enough to allow Danish actress Asta Nielsen to assume Shakespeare’s most famous male role. More interested in something modern? Mixed in with the festival’s restored and rediscovered classic titles is what’s being talked about as the definitive “final cut” of the famous 1982 Ridley Scott sci-fi epic “Blade Runner.”

More of a music fan? The festival even includes a music series, with Murray Lerner’s “The Other Side of the Mirror: Bob Dylan Live at the Newport Folk Festival, 1963-65,” which recounts two essential years in the career of Mr. Dylan, and Peter Bogdanovich’s “Runnin’ Down a Dream,” a four-hour documentary about Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Director Carlos Saura, meanwhile — the man behind the popular Flamenco Trilogy — takes viewers to Portugal in “Fados,” named after the distinct musical style that the movie focuses on, a style some have dubbed “the Portuguese blues.”

“It’s a risk you run with festivals, that everything is oriented around newness in thepressandthat’swhateveryone’sthinking about — what’s the newest, or what can I see before everyone else,” said Kent Jones, the festival’s associate programmer and a member of the selection committee. “But that’s only tangentially related to the question of quality. There are a lot of high-profile films that we are showing this year, but a lot where the profile isn’t that high that are just exciting.”

In other words, for all the buzz surrounding the festival’s biggest titles — all of which will sell out quickly during the festival, despite the fact that they will probably open not long after in major New York theaters — there are a number of gems that audiences will only have one or two opportunities to see on the big screen. Those are the rare treats, the once-in-alifetime gems, that serious movie buffs should be flocking toward — the special presentations that are all going on sale for the first time today.

Here are four quick picks worth considering before the tickets run out:

1. Josef von Sternberg’s “Underworld” opened small in 1927 but went on to be big — not only for its director, who became something of a sensation, but also for a gangster genre that it did so much to define and establish. Brought to the festival in a restored print, and featuring a live accompaniment by the brilliant Alloy Orchestra, “Underworld” screens twice on Thursday, October 4.

2. Martin Scorsese has personally lent his name to the “In Glorious Technicolor” cause, a program geared toward restoring classic films and reviving the vivid radiance of Technicolor epics. The two titles chosen to screen as part of the NYFF include 1939’s “Drums Along the Mohawk,” another film by Mr. Ford, and John Stahl’s “Leaver Her to Heaven.” For any film fan conscious of the art form’s history, the chance to see both restored titles — not only in their original aspect ratios, but with a restored and enhanced color palette — is a rare treat. Both titles screen Friday, October 12.

3. Of all the special “Directors Dialogues” presentations scheduled for the festival, the final one on October 13 looks to be the best of them all. Heralding the return of director Sidney Lumet to the NYFF, and celebrating a career that has included some 35 features — including “Fail-Safe,” which screened at the 1964 NYFF — Film Comment editor Gavin Smith will host a conversation with Mr. Lumet about his distinctly New York career, his morally ambiguous achievements and his latest work, the Philip Seymour Hoffman/Ethan Hawke thriller “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead.”

4. “Macunaíma” is a pillar of the festival’s special tribute to Brazilian director Joaquim Pedro de Andrade, one of the director’s most profitable and widely known titles. The zany story of a hero’s travels from Brazil’s jungles to its towering cities, the work is a country-spanning tale that evokes a palpable sense of change and evolution in this corner of the world. For those unfamiliar with Mr. Andrade’s work, the fully restored “Macunaíma” — screening September 29 and 30, as well as October 3 and 5 — is the perfect introduction to a filmmaker, and a world cinema, that deserves far more attention.

ssnyder@nysun.com


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